


The Other

by Attani



Series: Viand [1]
Category: Dracula - Bram Stoker, Vampire Chronicles - Anne Rice
Genre: Blood and Violence, F/F, F/M, vampire
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-03-17
Updated: 2016-03-17
Packaged: 2018-05-27 09:05:15
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,968
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/6278230
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Attani/pseuds/Attani
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Having been stranded on earth with Lady Pique, Jacques thinks he is the only one of his kind struggling to find meaning and sustenance amongst savages.</p>
            </blockquote>





	The Other

Jacques was contemplating the ethics of change and its ironies while strolling through the gardens at Versailles late one night. The statuesque hedges were as well-groomed as were the nobility that owned them, and as elegant as the enlightened thoughts of the unheard voices outside the gates, in backrooms and cafes across France. A shallow pool reflected the clear night sky. Jacques was as ready for what was coming as he was ready to abandon his white wig and silken garments for, even though he had a certain penchant for the ostentatious, anything could become tedious.

Jacques liked change. It gave meaning to his existence, or so he thought. He knew that when change came many perished under the onslaught of self-righteousness, false virtue, and underlying greed. He had seen it many times before. It was entertainment for the perennially disenchanted.

While Jacques preferred the scenery of his long distant world, he knew that those who had decided to send him away were quite happy to see the back of him and would most likely guard against his return. Fat chance he had of that. The ship was clearly designed to break apart leaving its passengers stranded.

He had been resolute to find whatever solace he could on this, his adopted home.

He felt her as she came up from behind him. A shift in ions, the scent of an electrical charge in the air foretold her approach. A small, soft hand touched his sleeve.

“Where have you been?” Jacques asked a woman wearing a modest wig and an immodest gown. A slight shimmer like air upon a hot surface, an unusual bending of light, almost unseen, surrounded her.

He was cross and she knew it. She ignored him for a moment, pretending to study a nearby statue, a nude female form, one in a long line of identical statues. The moon in full blossom illuminated the garden path and drained the color from their skin and clothes.

“In a dream,” said the woman.

“Lost in memories; lost in time?” he said in a fatigued manner and turned his gaze away from her.

She faced him.

“Something like that. Do you remember when we first met?”

He looked back at her with renewed interest.

“Spring. Greece. We were looking out at the eternal sea,” he said.

“Only we are eternal.” She smiled as if she had a knowledge he lacked.

“If you say so,” he replied, his eyes flashing.

Her enigmatic air annoyed him. She was always doing this, being cryptic in order to twist his mind, to bring him to heel. She acted as though her femininity made such inscrutable comments acceptable, desirable even.

“We were home. And it was summer. We were about to board the ship. Surely you remember?” she said.

“Well, I knew it was warm,” he bantered.

“I was speaking to the captain. You bumped into me as if to say that I was nothing and I became angry with you. Do you remember now?” Her words held a false sweetness as she moved closer to him.

Jacques stopped walking and remembered the impressive yet dreaded ship and the slight woman with the dark hair and haughty attitude; the woman currently by his side. He chuckled. Aside from the peacocks, there was no other sound in the garden. But then, those who had no thought for the morrow had passed out hours ago.

“You’re right, it’s been so long that I’d forgotten,” said Jacques. “You were young and full of yourself. You thought you were special, indispensable.”

She tilted her head and looked at him in a manner that made Jacques uncomfortable as if he’d said something unintentionally funny and was unaware of it. Then her expression changed back to self-satisfaction.

“I think I’ve proven myself,” she said.

“And I, a prisoner of this Enlightened Age, thank you.” He gave her a mock bow, flourishing his left hand.

Ignoring him the woman crossed a narrow strip of grass to walk alongside the conically shaped hedges and reflecting pool.

“Do you like France?” she asked.

“It’s not home but yes, especially now.”

“It’s a time of great change isn’t it?”

“Indeed.”

“A time of passion and violence.” Her voice lowered in deliberate feigned excitement. Her sly smile goaded him.

“What are you implying?” Jacques asked, anger rising in his voice.

“After all this time, do you really think that it’s necessary to ask?” she said with false indifference.

Jacques turned and strode away from her shouting out, “Goodnight to you, Lady Pique.”

                                    

The German Calvary surrounded the statue on the Place Louis XV as 300 Swiss soldiers stood behind them. The heat of the afternoon had not dissipated. Citizens began to gather, at first wondering what was going on and then more arrived carrying their anger and frustration with them. They picked loose stones up off the ground. The Swiss looked at each other but did nothing. A boy struck a German horse with a stone. The Germans advanced upon the mob. Nearby, watching from the doorway of a bakery stood Jacques assuming the look of a middle-class merchant but with a perverse gleam in his eye. He breathed deeply as though a hypnotic drug permeated the air. His eyes became glassy.

 

“I love Paris in autumn. These are truly the best years. I can only hope that they go on forever,” Jacques told Lady Pique as she walked beside him along the street. “Can you not smell the burning leaves?”

“I believe that is someone’s house,” she replied tartly.

“Is it?” Jacques asked in mock innocence.

“You are in your element. The suffering of millions exists here for you to drink in at your leisure. You are becoming --”

“There’s no leisure about it,” interrupted Jacques. “Each night it seems as though I need more. But no matter, there is always an excess of pain.” He gave her a wink which earned them a leer from a passerby.

A man in rags ran up to them and said to Jacques, “Beheadings! More beheadings!”

“Very good! Wonderful,” cried Jacques as the man ran past. Then to Lady Pique, “He was so elated, I think he pissed his pants.”

“You are incorrigible,” said Lady Pique with a grin.

Jacques raised an eyebrow and said, “I am what I am. Shall we go watch?”

She shrugged one shoulder and said, “Why not?”

An open wooden cart rolled past them carrying several frightened and angry looking people.

“Look,” he said. “The tumbrel!”

Smiling, Jacques wiggled his fingers at them then turned to Lady Pique but she was gone.

 

Late one night, Jacques walked through the streets feeling a need he could as yet define. The air was damp and chill, forcing most people inside to huddle by fires or at least a worn blanket. A strange new hunger driving him, Jacques scoured Paris for anything that could satiate it.

In the distance a soft voice sang a lullaby and he followed the soprano through some alleys to a small, dank apartment. With almost more caution than he could bear, Jacques eased open the door. Inside, a twelve-year-old girl teased an infant with her fingers. Her honey colored hair curtained the side of her face, hiding him from her. Deep voices then laughter emanated from another room. A cat mewled outside as cold air breathed into the nursery. The girl looked up and saw Jacques in the open doorway. The scent of her blood was maddening.

“Mon Dieu,” she cried out.

“Your God isn’t watching you tonight,” said Jacques.  

He was on her, teeth deep inside her neck before her scream could echo through the alleyway. Two burly men rushed from the other room ready to defend the girl but it was already too late. Jacques let her thin body fall across the bassinet, blood splattering the screaming infant’s face, and escaped faster than the men could cry out in rage.

Jacques ran through the streets, disheveled and pale with a mixture of pain and contentment coursing through his body. His muscles felt as if they were being pulled apart, his gut seemed to shrivel to nothing and his skin became clammy. Yet the beast within felt satisfied.

He burst through the door to his apartments, staggering in from the night. His footman, thinking his master had been attacked, came running but Jacques waved him away and climbed the stairs to his bedroom alone. He slammed the door shut behind him and leaned heavily against a bedpost in the unlit room.

“I know you are here. Speak to me!”

“What would you have me say?” Lady Pique appeared from the shadows.

“What is happening to me?” Jacques demanded.

“I don’t understand. Please rephrase your query.”

“I crave more, Lady Pique,” Jacques’ voice lowered to a hoarse whisper.

He was shivering and droplets of red sweat ran down his face. Lady Pique looked at him with concern but did not approach him.

“But there are so many,” she said carefully.

“That’s not what I mean. I crave something more substantial. Emotions won’t feed me anymore,” he looked pointedly at Lady Pique. “I drank blood tonight. It is painful, lady.”

Rather than comforting him, she took a step back and regarded Jacques with an absence of sentiment. There was blood on his face and down the front of his clothes.

“They were afraid of this,” she said.

“What? Do you know what is happening to me? Tell me!”

“Your inability to control your appetite, your insatiable gluttony has led you to this night. But it was foretold. You have something within your brain that most of the people of our world do not. A deformity. You are not the first. Your kind has appeared before and were quickly, discreetly hidden away. It is always the same progression; the normal empathy, then the absorption of emotion, the lust for pain, blood, and finally madness. And this planet, it is nothing more than a dumping ground for the unwanted, for people like you.”

Loud voices could be heard in the street below, then the door being forced open to the aborted cry of the footman. A shot rang out. Heavy steps ran up the stairs. Jacques looked towards Lady Pique but she was gone.

“Lady!” he cried out.

 

Thin and weak from hunger, Jacques shivered as men in hoods dragged him up the wooden steps. His struggles against his captors were little more than perfunctory upon the scaffold. Lady Pique stood, dressed in black, by the guillotine, unseen by any but her charge. Jacques looked down at her, his eyes pleading.

“You know I’m not corporeal.” she said.

“Yet you’ve been with me for centuries.”

“I am a construct created by your people to help alleviate your loneliness.”

“Ha! To accentuate it.”

“They are not as cruel as you. They know you came from them. They feel it deeply.”

“Yet they let me be murdered by these animals.”

“Nothing lives forever.”

He fell to his knees.

“That is a great consolation,” he said sarcastically.

“Except energy,” whispered Lady Pique as Jacques was forced to expose his neck to the towering wooden device.

Jacques heard the crowd jeering and could smell their filth mixed with the excitement in their sweat and other natural secretions. Some hags sat close by, knitting. His head was locked in place.

“You cannot kill me! I am in the air you breathe! I am your Go—” he never heard the blade.

 

Late that night, a lone man carried a dirt-encrusted headless body from a freshly dug up grave and tossed it in his cart where Jacques’ head lay. Slowly, he pulled the cart out of the graveyard and in his wake there was a slight shimmer like air upon a hot surface, an unusual bending of light, almost unseen.


End file.
